In the current (April 2023) issue of Uncut, we track down many of the original bands who appeared on Lenny Kaye’s 1972 garage/psych/head compilation Nuggets to find out what happened next.
By startling coincidence, a newly expanded box set of Nuggets has just been announced for this year’s Record Store Day, which takes place on April 22. Here, Kaye exclusively reveals all about a very special edition of this much-loved comp…
Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968, the 1972 compilation which helped define garage-rock and inspire New York’s punk revolution, is to be celebrated with the release of a 5-LP vinyl box-set for Record Store Day.
The new tracklisting both greatly expands the original release and revises Rhino’s 1998 CD box-set. “It’s going to be a beautiful thing,” Kaye tells Uncut. “The original double-album is remastered from the original tapes. Two discs represent my vision of what Volume 2 would have been in 1973. Then there’s The Also Dug-Its – a fifth, mongrel disc of tracks left by the wayside that makes me smile. I’ve done new liner notes and biogs for the new discs. The original notes stay with what I knew in 1972.”
Kaye lists some of the highlights we can expect. “At the end of Nuggets’ original liner notes I said, ‘Please write to Elektra and let them know if you think the magic’s in the music, or the music’s in you…’ So disc 3 starts with ‘Do You Believe In Magic’ by The Lovin’ Spoonful. I finally got ‘96 Tears’ by ? And The Mysterians in after 50 years, and ‘The Spider And The Fly’ by The Monocles. You really have to hear this one! ‘The First Cut Is The Deepest’ by The Koobas is just about the only English record on Nuggets – a Cat Stevens song as if Vanilla Fudge did it. And when Nuggets came out, I got letters and 45s from a guy from Long Island called Joe Dokko, who thought his group The Mystic Tide would be perfect for it – and I’m using their cut ‘Frustration’.
“The Also Dug-Its starts with the E-Types’ ‘Put The Clock Back On The Wall’ – because that’s what I’m doing. It also includes Luke & the Apostles’ ‘Been Burnt’. I saw them live supporting the Dead at the Cafe au Go Go in 1967 and they were fucking amazing. I don’t think it even came out as a real record. Then there’s, sorry for the self-indulgence, ‘Crazy Like A Fox’ by Link Cromwell [Kaye himself, on a 45 from 1966]. There’s also ‘99th Floor’ by Billy Gibbons’ band The Moving Sidewalks and ‘Going Back to Miami’ by Wayne Cochrane And CC Riders – a blistering record. And I close it out with ‘I’m Five Years Ahead Of My Time’ by The Third Bardo. And of course that’s true, because five years ahead of Nuggets’ release was 1977, when a certain shit hit the fan.
“There will be come related concerts, where we’ll hopefully find some of the original Nuggets to reprise their greatest hits,” Kaye concludes. “It’s really a celebration.”
You can browse the full list of Record Store Day releases here.